The First Time I Saw Semi Precious Weapons by DJVH1

 In the spring of 2007 I needed a job. I talked the owners of Pianos in the Lower East Side into letting me have Sunday nights.  Most of my good friends were DJs and bartenders and waitresses and GoGo girls—we spent our weekends dancing for dollars and we had no place to go on our night off.  Pianos used to close around 1:30am on Sundays.

The bar backs used to call Sundays “Suicide Sundays” because they made no money—so we kept the name.  But once a month we had “Posse Night” which included any number of Lower East Side bands and DJs (sometimes they were interchangeable).

That night I put Gaga in charge of getting her own opening bands for the night.  She showed up with a posse of her own friends, carting equipment and disco balls, straight from Gaga’s house three blocks away.

Lady Starlight came in, buzzing somewhat with fresh make up ringing her eyes.  Our friend Dino acted as their roadie, carting a keyboard and a disco ball.  - “Are you excited?” I aksed.

“Yes I can’t wait this is going to be the best show ever!!” she gave me a big hug.

“Did you get an opening band?”

“Yes, but Starlight has to work tomorrow at nine.  So we’re going on first.” 

“Really?" Wait. The only band we know with a major label deal wants to open up for a bunch of boys from Boston who just started their band? They don’t even have a record yet. “Look, you can charge whatever you want at the door, because it all goes to the bands. Normally I have a guy doing the door and he writes down who is there to see which band and you get the full cover. But tonight he’s DJ’ing upstairs for this new party called Red Light District and Tali De’Mar is GoGo dancing.”

“No cover.  No money.  I just want to play.”

“And the other bands are okay with that?”

“Yes.”

 Right then Justin Tranter from Semi Precious Weapons walked in with this guy I know who owns a clothing boutique in Greenpoint called Alter.  Justin clomped in with a big smile on his face, wearing two pairs of panty hose and a ripped t-shirt.

“Can you believe I got them to play?” Gaga shrieked with joy.

Starlight got set up as soon as they got there so that she could finish up in time.  At that time she was a makeup artist and she had to be up for work in just a few hours. Normally if the party goes well I get stuck up front, dealing with the drunks and the DJs (oftentimes the same problem).

Tonight when everyone went in to the live room we realized: We had no DJ.  One was supposed to start at 10, but where was he?

I walked into the live room to look for him.

Inside, a rose-lit Lady Gaga had half the Lower East Side wrapped around her little mic-cord. 

I had known her for a long time by then, but I'd never seen her perform like this before.  She connected with the entire audience, cheered on by this giant, bleach blonde creature named Justin from Semi Precious Weapons.

She played the living shit out of her synth and sang a pitch-perfect song about being 20 (now 21) and confused and in love.  It never got released.  “Wunderful.”

If I fell in love with you would you understand me dear?

Love is weird.

I colored you a valentine, struggled just to stay inside the lines

I lose my mind.

I really can’t believe I lost myself again.

My voice caught in my throat and right then I caught this look from Gaga as she looked into my wide eyes.  She smiled back at me as if to say, “Thanks for noticing, buster.”  *Wink.*

 On the way back to the bar St. Michael looked at me.  “What just happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Where’s the DJ for later?”

“He wasn’t back there.”  I’d forgot to look.  “Wait.  Let me double check just to be sure.”

Shameless excuse.  I couldn’t pull my ears away from such a beautiful voice.

The felsic crowd erupted to the appreciative singer.  Starlight cued up another record and dropped in Gaga’s Lollapalooza hit “Blueberry Kisses,” a little ditty about needing some “muffin-lovin’.”

 After the show Starlight walked up with her record bag and her coat on.  “I have to get to bed, honey.  I love you.”  

Semi Precious Weapons started tuning up on stage.  Justin pulled Gaga into the live room in back and shut the sound proof door.

Just then I heard an explosion coming from the back.  A sonic valve churned out a crag of guitar.  Pint glasses shook under the taps.  People outside smoking squinted through the windows to find what they heard.  At the bar you couldn’t hear the drinks people ordered, I ran in back to investigate.

On stage that little bottle blonde baby gawked at his audience and put on the singer equivalent of a bass-face, sneering through his makeup. 

The guitar went on. 

The drums materialized in perfect succession as if the amp feedback had stirred them to life. 

Justin screamed into the microphone the one perfect line that resonated with ever soul in the room, “I can’t pay my rent, but I’m fucking gorgeous.”  That line is so personally effacing, that hearing it out loud- for once, matters more than reading it written down.

Gaga stood off to the side of the stage, head-banging her then-dark mane all around the room.

I walked back into the bar, which had completely emptied by then.  The manager ran over to me, hanging up this little pink Razr phone we had that forwarded calls to us when we couldn’t hear the phone in the office,  “Brendan, we can’t have this,” the manager shouted.  “Heavy metal on a Sunday night?  The neighbors are complaining; I have the sound guy cutting all the mics and the drums are a capella right now and it’s still too loud.”

“They said they wanted to use their own Marshalls,” I gave him a very cartoonish shrug.

“We have to do something.”

The manager shook his head, “We have no GoGo dancer for the new upstairs party, she didn’t show up.  Now you’ve got this noise.  There's a guy across the street hurling potted plants at us off his fire escape, shouting death threats if we don't turn it down.”

I went back into the live room.  A mist of hot breath and sweat danced in the stage lights.  Justin finished singing and took a deep breath, pacing up and down the stage in his two pairs of panty hose, wiping the sweat from his forehead, “Whoooo, what a wonderful, hot sweaty gig we have here tonight.  I think I’m going to lose fifteen pounds up here.”  Everyone laughed and I thought how great it was to see after dealing with all these bands that take themselves too seriously. 

He was like the Lower East Side Sinatra.

I walked back outside after talking to Gaga for a second.  The manager pumped me for answers as the soundproof door shook to an early incarnation of ‘Magnetic Baby’

“Did you get them to turn it down?”

“What can we possibly do?” I said.  “They only have four songs.  Total.  Wait it out.”

 The boys of Semi Precious Weapons belched out of the live room in a vomit of hairspray, glitter and glaMOUR.  Every eye - every-single-eye that came out of that room kept focused and smiling on one person who had performed.  Former lab partners who came to see Gaga as a favor became converts to SPW.  Alex Magnetic—a prominent scenester and muse at the time—became the inverse convert to Lady Gaga. 

This was, in the very purest sense of the word, the beginning of a scene.  And because none of us belonged anywhere, and a Sunday night free show - to some seriously broke kids can mean the world at the right time—we will always have this to remember. 

Every band on the roster that night literally did it for one reason.  They were doing it for the fame.

Gaga later wrote about it for ‘Vanity’ which later came out at a bonus-track and on the Australian version of “The Fame.”

Midnight at the glamour show on a Sunday night.

Everybody drank a lot of whiskey and wine.

We dance like no tomorrow; we’re on burlesque time.

But everybody’s gotta work tomorrow at nine.

Normally when a band finishes in the LES everyone goes outside for a smoke or they rush the bar for another drink.  But when Gaga found out that they had no GoGo dancer upstairs she ran up there to take her place.  A legion of neo-devotees of both bands followed her upstairs, leaving the main floor completely empty.

I ran up behind her as she strode over to the GoGo platform.  “What are you doing?”

“These guys need a GoGo dancer.  And I am a GoGo dancer.  The show must go on, yeah.” She she gave me a huge smile and mounted the GoGo platform with Justin and the rest of the boys cheering her on.